Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Proof that internet feminists have no chance against sexism in gaming

Internet feminists often rally against the outright sexist and objectifying avatars in video games. Here is a "great" collection of completely non-protecting armor which serve no other purpose than make the female avatars look sexy. Feminists believe this is because of the laziness and irresponsibility of developers who can't make good games and fill the gaps with eye-candy at the expense of women. The infamous Anita Sarkeesian has a collection of sexist tropes (reused cliches like the Damsel in Distress) and believes that devs should stop using them in the name of equality.

While I really don't like sexist outfits as it damages game immersion and believability, I realized that internet feminists are wrong about their "trope" thing and they have zero chance to get rid of sexism in gaming. No, it's not my opinion, it's proven by Black Desert Online.

BDO female armor is silly, but not outright sexist. While it rather look like stylish party dress instead of armor, which is dumb for a tanking class, it checks out only a few fields on the female armor bingo:

Look at these "armors" on the other hand:

Ouch, they are absolutely horrible for protection and clearly serve no other purposes than sexist eye-candy. Yet, they can serve no tropes or sexist purposes at all since they aren't in the game by default. You can't find or craft any of these abominations. There is no situation when they appear. They are simply non existent, therefore no design could be made around them.

These "armors" come from the item shop. You have to pay $20-30 to buy one. As they are purely cosmetic overlays and your stats come from your in-game armor, buying them have absolutely no in-game purpose. Yet people buy them in large quantities as evidenced by their widespread presence in the game world. Since the latest ones greatly outnumber the older ones we can assume that many players bought several costumes and wear only the latest.

The point isn't that if only every second player bought one, the devs made $10-15 million on them, making them probably the most profitable game assets. The point is that players consider game+sexism $20-30 more valuable than the very same game without sexism. Ergo, profit oriented devs have no choice but to make their game sexist. The only choice they have is to limit this sexism for players who are not interested in it, just like BDO have no stripper-looking NPCs, I find female NPCs completely well-dressed and non-sexualized. Games with no sexism at all can only happen for non-profit developers.

Sorry feminists, you are simply outmarketed. Games aren't made sexists because of sexist tropes in the heads of the devs, the tropes come from the need to somehow integrate stripper looking characters into the game. I mean it's not "I'm lazy so let's use the centuries old Damsel in Distress story and design a passive, weakling Damsel" but "boss told me I need to put this stripper into the game because it pays for my salary how the hell should I do that for a game where every character is a soldier or terrorist?! Oh, wait, she'll be the hostage!"

BDO devs didn't do that, so the stripper gear is just there with no connection to anything, with no one trying to explain why it is there. You don't get it by accident and you don't see it on NPCs. You just see it on idiots when you are in cities and bother to stop and look instead of just minding your own business.

31 comments:

Anonymous
said...

You really need to get yourself away from the dumblr vortex. Even ignoring the fact that there were virtually zero HEAVY armored female warriors in all of history, wearing "stripper" gear instead was actually favorable for combat. There are several east Asian martial arts specifically designed for unarmed and ungeared peasants to stand against a knight or two. Ninjas couldn't wear serious gear because they needed to travel long distances under concealment. Zulu had no armor, and used many of the same training techniques that the ancient Greeks used to strengthen their bodies and harden their feet. The famous Spartans relied on shields, spears, and formations to circumvent heavily armed forces. And if you really look at medieval armor, there are plenty "random patches of skin uncovered" just to be able to MOVE AT ALL. Combat evolved into fatal strikes at weak spots instead of outright bludgeoning, and all else being equal, the more agile warrior had the advantage.

Whether the feminists like it or not, they can't change history. The Samurai had the sturdiest armor in history, and were the only ones to develop and use bulletproof armor while everyone else was stripping down against guns. But by that point, armor no longer had a practical purpose, and people the world over were using it only for display. "Stripper" armor is actually much more historically accurate!

Just to drive one more stake into their baseless claims, there are even technological reasons against favoring full, restrictive armor. The human body is the most complex organism that we know of, and people who care about graphics understand that it's the physics that lead to advancements, not textures. By covering the body with bulky and fixed objects, all the subtleties of the human form are removed from display. Hair, fabrics, muscles, and yes, even boobs, are very difficult and computationally expensive to render faithfully, and it's all the more impressive when done well. At the end of the day, women simply have more fashion choices than men. There are only so many ways to make swimming trunks armor. And from the publisher's perspective, if both male and female characters had the same armor, that's less assets to sell.

>Also, if all of it is true, why male armor is full plate, while the female version of the VERY same armor is stripper? Almost every single box on their bingo chart can be explained by practical purpose, technological design, or just by opening any history book. Ever.There are two parts that explain the stripper full plate. Expanding on parts of the last post, games with more complex armor systems tend to rank them against crushing, slashing, and piercing damage. This represents how armor was used in real life. Different weapons needed different types of armor to deflect or dampen the attack. Combat-made full plate was actually relatively light, and was designed to deflect cuts, thus granting high avoidance rather than absorption. The stripper plate makes sense here because it showcases that avoidance by making the wearer appear more vulnerable.

The second part is that high-level armor having a fragile appearance is pretty common in asian games. As the character and monster abilities become more fantastical, it actually makes less sense that the same old metals can still protect you against them. You can't absorb meteors. Dressed-down armors are a display of power, and there is usually a set for both male and female characters. However, the blatantly sexualised stuff is usually censored or removed when being released in the west, since the east has more lax views regarding sexuality. Making then cash shop only was a smart decision.

Don't forget the technological history, either. In really old games, designers were forced to use stereotypically male and female designs because it would be too hard to tell different characters apart at a glance - or any sort of distance - otherwise. It's a convention that stuck around as graphics improved. But even back then, rarely would anyone complain about them. Many female players WANT their character to look feminine. It's only with this recent sjw craze that it has even become a talking point.

The male version of the stripper armor is the robe-and-only-robe-wearing mage. That's something that never gets any spotlight.

You are mixing "stripper" and "lot of skin". Female athletes often wear very little, yet they don't look like strippers. There is absolutely no point of covering parts of the breast but not other parts besides purposeful sexy looking.

But the elephant in the room is that the same outfit given to a male becomes a full body robe. Anything you can make up to explain the stripper looking female armor is true for the male armor, so the male should also wear long boots with stiletto heels and G-strings using only a triangle to cover the nipple.

@Second anon: there are practical costumes (like cook, maid and Ghillie) which aren't (too) sexist and have effects. And there are purely cosmetic costumes that are usually outright sexist.

By offering the artwork they are facilitating and providing the opportunity to be offensive. They might not be putting women into skimpy clothing but they are providing the tools and encouragement for others to do so.Some players might consider game+sexism to be more valuable but the dev should consider the negative social impact that encouraging a sexist atmosphere has in their game. In permitting sexism they are choosing to depreciate the gaming experience for a community of players and risk driving away those players or demonstrate that community is worth less than others. The net result is a reduced player base that either objectifies women, tolerates sexist opinion or considers sexism to be immutable.

@Dobablo: the game itself costs $30. ONE sexist outfit costs $30. So if they drive away a decent person for every pig, they are still not losing money.

The underlying problem is that decent people don't like to waste their money, while idiots are. So an idiot is always a better customer (see tomorrow's post) than a decent person. Actually he is better than 10 decent people. So games will cater to idiots who want to get reward for pressing any key and want strippers.

@ first anon:Get away from these drugs! Seriously, there never was any situation in real life combat, where wearing no protection was better than wearing protection. And don't use that ninja crap to try to prove anything. They travelled in disguise, but they also never attacked in open battle formations. Their MO was the sneak attack from behind, by cover of darkness...

And please, please please please, don't try to convince us that samurai armour was the sturdiest or that katanas were the best sabres ever forged... These claims do not stand the test of reality. Real katanas (made in 15th-16th century) are crude, short hacking tools, which are most often bent because of the weak iron spine. They look horrible once unsheathed.

Samurai were primitive, nasty people, who tries to viciously defend their privileges even when it became most clear to anybody that they had for a long time outlived their usefulness.Bulletproof samurai armour was rather the exception.

I wonder why medieval knights or Roman legionaires bothered to wear highly expensive and heavy armour, they must have been really dumb as they would have performed much better going into battle naked, therefore unimpeded by this clumsy and useless armour...

Even worse, most people do not understand the concept of armour at all. Many people still believe that the "iron clothing" was all the knight s wore. This is ridiculous. Wearing a metal helmet directly on your skull would not protect you one little bit. What made plate armour so effective was the padding underneath.

Yes, it is true that most deadly blows were dealt to unprotected areas such as ankles,faces or armpits, but that does not prove your point, it proves the usefulness of armour as no deadly blows were dealt to armoured areas...

Oh, and everytime you see some English BS historians demonstrate the effectiveness of bodkin arrows against plate armor, just watch another channel! They are trying to prove a point by using weak stage/theater armour and weak 60-80lbs bows with weak standard arrows.Even when the arrowhead pierces the plate, it never pierced the underlying gambeson...

So, please, give us a break and do not try to convince us that stripper armour is meaningful.

"And if you really look at medieval armor, there are plenty "random patches of skin uncovered" just to be able to MOVE AT ALL. Combat evolved into fatal strikes at weak spots instead of outright bludgeoning, and all else being equal, the more agile warrior had the advantage."

Having 30% of the armour of your opponent to show off your pretty tummy and legs is not 'all else being equal'.

From the 13th to the 16th centuries, the evolution of European plate armour was entirely in the direction of 'cover everything up as much as possible and design ever more clever gorgets, rondels, poleyns, etc. to protect the vulnerable joints.' And please, do kindly educate me on those 'random patches of skin uncovered'. Pretty sure everyone wore as much mail and gambeson under plate as humanly possible, again particularly around the joints. And that deflection business? Boob plate catches and directs half the blows to the torso directly into the sternum, so good job there.

You may be frustrated with eye-candy policing, and there may well be more important problems out there, but this argument that 'less armour is actually MORE armour' is an insult to intelligence. We all know exactly why stripper armour is a thing, and it isn't because anyone worried about historical accuracy.

It is profitable for game developers to offer their clients sexist outfits. Market forces drive gaming to sexism. All is lost!

Or is it?

It is also very profitable for farmers to offer their clients cannabis. It is very profitable for pharmacists to offer their clients heroine. It is very profitable for printers to offer their clients counterfiet money... And this list can be continued indefinetely. Yet we don't see this happening most of the time, despite market forces.

"The famous Spartans relied on shields, spears, and formations to circumvent heavily armed forces."That's true, AND the hoplite armor. Before you ask why they didn't use anything heavier, the reason is the same as why they didn't use guns...

"Zulu had no armor" True, but also outside the availability issue, maybe the very hot climate may be one of the reasons of it.

" There are several east Asian martial arts specifically designed for unarmed and ungeared peasants to stand against a knight or two. "Sorry, no knight in asia. Also, those arts were specifically designed to give peoples without the right to bear arms a way to defend themself.

"Ninjas"Like someone said it before, they are spies, not heavy duty fighters.

"Combat evolved into fatal strikes at weak spots instead of outright bludgeoning, and all else being equal, the more agile warrior had the advantage."True, and not only does that prove the effectiveness of armor, it also prove how much of an advantage armor was during sword fights, as it allowed to ignore some weak blow and just counter-attack while your opponent was unbalanced. Even if your armor don't cover your whole body, severely limiting your opponent offensive is always a good option.

Also, armors were designed for large scale battles, not duels. And sure you can dodge and parry efficiently against a single opponentfor maybe 10 to 15 minutes, but for a battle lasting more than 1 hour, with opponents all around you, you don't want to rely on your stamina and your ability to see the coming blow.

Finally, as a gamer, I like to play warriors / tanks in that kind of games, and for me, the heavy duty armor is just part of the character appeal, so yes, I would rather see more games with the proper armor for female characters.

@Souuldrinker: yes, the government could make in-game sexism illegal, like drugs and then it wouldn't appear in open market games. But the chances of that happening is tiny when even outright porno is considered protected by free speech.

Still, for some reason, laws limit porno in video games pretty fine. I'd be happy if there were games labeled "sexism inside" for people who want such "entertainment", but most of the games were sexism free. Don't see anything that would make this happen, though.

I dont play these fantasy armor games, but why is this a problem exactly?Some ppl want a stripper outfit, they buy it from the vanity shop.Some ppl want decent armor and cant buy/find it in game?

So you just have to show, that there are enough ppl who want decent armor and would pay for it, and designers will put something in the item shop, right?

I dont see how objectifying women is sexism. Its a tool to sell products. If there would be a significant amount of female players who would like to play males with revealing clothes, they would sell these outfits. I guess women dont care that much for ripped abs. I think a more detailed character creation opportunity is more appealing to women than some revealed male body part. But maybe there is no common selling point for women. But most men like boobs. I dont see how and why would that offend anyone.

Most bodybuilding products are marketed with a good looking masculin guy in underpants. I was never offended by them and I am a 185cm 65kg guy looking like a starved prisoner. My gf told me once, that it makes her feel unsecure that on every corner there is a model in a bikini. I know they have an effect on girls, but I think its mostly the boyfriends fault, if he cant show her girlfriend, that his affection is not effected by these. So if your gf is bothered by these stripper outfits, maybe show her that she is beautiful to you. Or if you have a purely intellectual relationship, well then, I dont have a clue how any gaming outfit would matter.

@Antze: the reason is for that is decent people are less likely to pay for cosmetic crap than idiots. I wouldn't give $30 for a decent cosmetic armor, I just don't play if there isn't any. Sexist idiot pays for boobs.

@Anon: "I dont see how objectifying women is sexism." Simple: people are not happy about being treated as objects. Also, I doubt that besides feminists any woman is offended by these strippers. They are more likely disgusted by it and leave. Just like I would if I would be forced to play with a chippendale boy avatar.

Gevlon, there is already the rating system in place for games which rates them for violence, nudity, use of alcohol and narcotics, and swearwords. This system can be extended to cover sexism with the minimal effort.

If sexist games are set to 18+, developers would at least have to decide if they want to do sexist game for smaller audience or politically correct game for bigger audience.

Gevlon in response to your 14.47 reply to anon: the problem with that theory is the large nunber of female gamers who do dress their outfits that way. Over in swtor we have an outfit designer that lets you look cosmetically how you want with the real gear underneath hidden by the graphics engine. This is a game where princess leia slave costumes are available! Those are actually rare to see, but the number of lasses who wear dresses (yes they are female, we watch them stream/hear them on ts) and other such outfits equals the number of lads that do.

why? because we all typically find the same broad range of things attractive in our selves and others. Or would you argue that you want an option written in the game for your avatar to have really bad teeth? a bit of dental decay is realistic right?

@99smite Your arrow and plate armor comment mae me smile. You don't know your history. Its documented that at the battle of agincourt an arrow from an english longbow hit the thigh of a french knight. It went through the plate, through the chainmail underneath, through the padding, through his leg, through the padding chain and plate on the other side and then procceded to go through the leather saddle and bury itself into the horse. It pinned the knight to his horse which is how he was captured. I have no idea what the point of spreading disinfomation is but I can assure a 110 pound longbow (which btw I used to shoot with back when I was 17) can penetrate any armor we see from history books or in video games.

@Nightgerbil: no doubt that women like look sexy, as anyone can see it in a party.The problem is that these games are typically combat games where such outfit is extremely impractical therefore immersion breaking. The game world is well designed in BDO, with male and female NPCs alike wear proper clothing and between them the stripper in her stiletto heels is very much non-fitting and immersion braking.

Granted, her name "arthasdklol" belonging to guild "ipwnurass" is equally bad, but there isn't much the devs can do about that.

@nightgerbil - I ordinarily agree with most of what you write, but now find myself in the odd position of wishing to qualify all three of your statements.

Half the classes in SW:TOR are force users, for whom flowing robes, etc., are iconic. And SW:TOR is actually pretty good about egalitarian application of armour. A female trooper/BH or scoundrel/agent is barely distinguishable from the male. The dancer outfit (and a maybe a handful of others - matriarch's this, handmaiden's that...) are very much in the minority of what's available in that game. Sure, women like to dress up in the pretty dresses (or tank in a slavegirl outfit for larks, as a man might while wearing nothing but covert energy armour) but at least in my circles they're pretty hip to whether a dev is milking the skin factor or not.

Second, yes, absolutely. Bring on the morbidly obese avatars, and the missing-teeth avatars, and the face-half-blown-off avatars. People of both genders like freaky stuff and funny stuff almost as much as conventionally attractive stuff.

Third... man, you must be English. :) The longbowmen fired about a thousand arrows per second at the French knights at Agincourt. If all the armour were so easily penetrated (it did vary considerably in quality) how did any of the dismounted French knights manage to slog their way several hundred metres to reach the English lines and get hacked down by the men-at-arms?

>You are mixing "stripper" and "lot of skin".Maybe so, but crying about "sexism" of pixels while real life women are being enslaved today is retardation. Buying costume isn't the idiotic action here. You said it yourself that it's made because it sells. Have you ever written to the devs and asked their opinion on the non-issue?

>Anything you can make up to explain the stripper looking female armor is true for the male armor, so the male should also wear long boots with stiletto heels and G-strings using only a triangle to cover the nipple.Funnily enough, this actually used to exist in older games! It was the introduction of cash shops and microtransactions that made them disappear. (Yet you wouldn't have played them because you'd be disgusted to play as a "chippendale boy." Sexist pig!)Again, people have been complaining about "gay" mages, elves, rogues, bards, and every outfit in City of Heroes for YEARS, yet NOTHING like what you're doing today has ever happened for the other side. Who's really being sexist here?

What's your problem with people, both male and female, that want their avatars to look appealing to them? If they don't match the setting, fair enough (prostitution has existed since forever btw); but unless you plan on banning Korea and China from making games, vote with your wallet and don't play. Speaking of, in Korea it's tradition for girls to get PLASTIC SURGERY for their 16th BIRTHDAY. Not common, not sometimes, literally over 90% are FORCED into it. Why aren't you complaining about that?And again, there almost always IS a stripper equivalent in these games for male characters, if not an entire class that fights with at most a pair of pants for the entire game.

You could always ask the devs why there isn't an option to hide non-default outfits. A great many games allow this.

I like sexy armor and outfits just as much as the next guy. But it's true it breaks immersion. It should be optional, fanservice, for the so inclined, and not the default choice.

I hated Resident Evil 6 outfits for the 3 female playable characters. Ada, Leon's partner, and Sherry (Jake's partner). They had high heels, and were walking in caverns, sewers, catacombs, cities under fire and attacks.

Sexy armor has its place, and it sells, and yes, eye candy is nice. But a lot of us would prefer realistic armor as well.

@ Esteban. The effective range of a longbow is 200 yards. Maybe 300 yards if you pulled it past your ear, but you won't have much accuracy nor will you be doing that for very long. Its extremely fatiguing. Now I could get off 14-15 aimed arrows per minute. Apparantly the best bowmen could do 20. At agincourt according to records the archers fired at 220 yards out. Given a track horse can cover 200 yards in under 15 secs its safe to say that the french warhorses would have covered that distance inside 30 secs. so thats 7-10 arrows per archer. From 5000 archers. Thats the max they could have thrown out and they still broke that charge.

This debate is drifting off topic though. I disagree with the whole premise that attractive outfits or sexy costumes are in someway sexist or misognist. They are something that both genders find pleasure in. The whole SJW movement reminds me of a) 11th century catholics confessing to lewd desires with the fear of hell in their hearts b) communists self critising at the local party meetings and c) the women living under Isis in syria who have to cover their hands and face because those are the rules and its enforced with fanatical zeal BY OTHER WOMEN.

I refuse to accept that because I find a woman in a bikini sexy I'm a pig in need of reeducation or that my girl friend who likes to wear such a thing is a stupid bimbo whose setting back the cause for womenkind. Extremism in all its forms must be resisted or we will all lose our liberty and freedom to the fanatics.

@nightgerbil: finding a woman in bikini sexy is normal.Expecting a woman to wear bikini in a battle just so you get your pleasure is being a pig.Catholics, communists and ISIS consider sex itself and wanting sex bad. It's not.If evil demons invade your land and all you can think about is having sex, you ARE a bad person regardless of gender.

Now I fully understand that in a video game the battle is not real and the female characters are not real either. But since nothing is real in a video game, it's a non-argument, unless you also claim that griefing, goldselling and botting are fine since it only affects pixels.

With a more practical example: if there is a "feast hall" in the castle where extremely revealing party dresses for women and nobleman's costume for men are needed to enter it's quite fine. After all our heroes need entertainment and also they must mate to have the next generation of heroes. Everyone wearing these party dresses in battle is stupid. Only females wearing them while men are wearing full armor is outright misogynistic it claims that men deserve protection while the protection of women can be sacrificed for the pleasure of the men.

"Expecting a woman to wear bikini in a battle just so you get your pleasure is being a pig."

I think most ppl dont EXPECT ingame girls to wear bikinis in battles, but they are FINE/HAPPY with it. If the game would have decent armor, I don't think men would complain on forums like: "Why cant my char look like a slut?". If you have 2 MMORPGs, and one is better than the other in your point of view, noone will play the worse because it have slutty outfits while the other doesnt, everyone will play the better game. I dont think anyone plays SWTOR because of the Leia costume, they play it because they like the GAME.

This feels like expecting Ferrari to not design IMPRACTICAL cars for more money.

You should really decide what is your front argument. Sexism, or immersion breaking because of impracticality. If the first, you say you want these outfits out of the game and most ppl wont get in line with you, if the second, you just want an interface option where you disable slutty outfits, and most ppl wont go against you, and if enough ppl cares, you get that button (like disabling your hat/cape/tabard in WoW).

@Anon: I don't think I'd get the "disable slutty outfits". The button is trivial and devs could have implemented it long ago, just to make Anita shut up. They don't and won't because:- it would defeat the purpose of the slutty outfit: to show it off. Remember MMOs sell this crap, there is no "slutty outfit item shop" in single player games- it would acknowledge the fact that the outfit is slutty while the official statement is that these are normal clothes and there is nothing wrong with them

1: The wearer of the outfit don't know if the other char turned it off or not. Most players wont, I think, only the RP (immersion breaking) and feminists, definetly not the majority.

2: Theres no need to acknowledge the fact, because its a fact. No need to deny it either, because most ppl like it. Why do they sell them? Because it sells, a lot.If its immersion breaking/antifeminist for you; fight for RP servers where these are disabled, or play another game.I cant believe that there is an official statement like "The Leia costume is not slutty" from the devs, but please link a few from different MMORPGs like wow,swtor,bdo, lotro, etc.

1: even the chance will annoy them.2: for socials it's not a fact. They don't say "yes, I'm a sexist pig, deal with it", they say "I'm just a guy wanna have fun lol" and having a "disable sexism" button would mean that the company considers their activity inappropriate that deserves a filter like swear words on chat. They wouldn't be happy to be considered sexist pigs after they paid money for the sexist pig treats.

Games are mostly designed for teens and young adults. Adults that already went though their puberty phases are like secondary targets only. Games are "not real" and provide an outlet for fantasizing. These are basic human nature and hormonal changes facts, which is why your point is very valid.

from http://teenhealthsource.com/puberty/puberty-2/

Is it normal to think about sex all the time? Should I feel guilty about that?

Your puberty hormones may make you think about, dream about and fantasize about sex. There is no reason to feel guilty about your thoughts.

Sexual fantasies are normal, healthy and can’t hurt other people because the things you imagine aren’t real.

This is also a time when you may begin to notice who and what attracts you to someone and begin to discover your sexuality.